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John Jordan Douglass, clergyman and poet, was born on 4th August 1875
in Cumnock, Lee County, the oldest of nine children of William Campbell
and Josephine Tysor Douglass. His father was a successful attorney and
his brother, Clyde A. (1889–1973), was a longtime counselor-at-law in
Raleigh. His childhood was spent in Troy and Carthage, but the family
later moved to Raleigh.
In 1892 Douglass finished his preparatory schooling in Carthage and that
fall entered Wake Forest College, where he was a student for two years
and distinguished himself for his work in the Literary Society and for
his writing, especially poetry. In later years he often paid tribute to
Dr. Benjamin Sledd, his English teacher at Wake Forest. He also studied
for a short time at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Ky. In 1892 he had been licensed in the Baptist ministry by
the Carthage Baptist Church and subsequently was ordained by a
presbytery appointed and functioning on behalf of the Sandy Creek
Baptist Association in its 1895 session. From his studies at Louisville,
he went to Beaufort as pastor of the Baptist Church and then
successively served Baptist churches at Clinton, Warsaw and Mt. Gilead,
Wilson, and Dunn, as well as at Clio, S.C. In 1910, following his
five-year ministry at Clio, he changed his denominational affiliation to
Presbyterian and distinguished himself as pastor, preacher, and
community leader in churches at Blenheim, S.C. (1910–18), Wadesboro,
N.C. (1918–25), Jefferson City, Tenn. (1926–29), and Newton, N.C.
(1930–40).
An avid reader, Douglass accumulated a formidable library and was known
both for his studious care in preparing sermons and the superior quality
of his delivery. He spoke clearly and forcefully in an extemporaneous
fashion, without notes of any kind. His sermons were sprinkled with high
imagery and multiple poetic references to buttress his careful exegesis
of the Scriptures. In all communities where he ministered, he found time
to be active in local affairs, particularly in matters relating to
education and religion. He was a true community leader.
For more than fifty years, Douglass produced a voluminous amount of
written material, both prose and poetry. Three volumes of his poems were
published: The Bells, The Quest of the Star, and The Gates of Dreams.
The last was a carefully selected arrangement of his poems, published by
his wife the year after his death. He also published one novel, The
Girdle of the Great, or The New South. He left three unpublished novels;
those manuscripts have been lost or, in one instance, destroyed by fire.
Although no definitive study of his literary production has been made,
his individual poems appeared in many magazines and journals and
frequently in the Raleigh News and Observer, some of them even boxed on
the front page.
Douglass gained national publicity through a tribute in verse to
President Woodrow Wilson, to which Wilson responded personally with
appreciation. In 1938 Douglass read some of his poems before the Edgar
Allan Poe Society in New York, and he often appeared before clubs and
civic groups to lecture and read his poems. He was an active member of
the North Carolina Poetry Society and the North Carolina Literary and
Historical Association. In an appraisal of his poetry, G. A. Wauchope,
professor of English literature at the University of South Carolina,
wrote: "As a sea-poet, the author's style and treatment remind one of
Allen Cunningham, a poet of a century past who excelled in ballads and
songs of the free salt seas. . . . Mr. Douglass' mind is modern, but his
soul is Greek. Though by profession he happens to be a Protestant
clergyman by divine calling he is a son of Apollo whose magic flute has
lured him into the secret haunts of nature, where he communes with the
lovely nymphs and goddesses of the great outdoors."
Douglass was married first on 24 Feb. 1897 to Annie Duncan Rumley of
Beaufort. They had five children: Annie (died in infancy), John Jordan,
Jr., Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. Walker Hudson), Josie Tysor, and Donald Drake
(died in infancy). Mrs. Douglass died 16 June 1927. In 1928 Douglass
married Martha Taylor of Laurel Springs. He met her when she was a
student at Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tenn., where he often
spoke and conducted panel discussions on poetry during his ministerial
tenure in that city. They had one child, Clyde Virginia (Mrs. John M.
Harper).
Douglass died on 28th May 1940 at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte at
the age of sixty-five. Memorial services were held in the Newton
Presbyterian Church of which he had been pastor, and burial followed in
the family plot in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh.
by C. Sylvester Green, 1986
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